Let Him Do What Seemeth Him Good
by liptonrm
Summary: Sam hears whispers of a faith healer in Alabama. Slight XFiles crossover.


Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. It's all Kripke's and the CW's and blah, blah, blah. We all know who the real braintrust is around here.

Spoilers: General for the series. Takes place in between 'Crossroad Blues' and 'Croatoan'.

The screen door slammed shut behind him and Sam stepped into the dim sanctuary of the stately old home that held the Epees, Alabama Historical Society. He could hear the rumble of the Impala's engine as it drove away and the noise of a couple of dogs barking down the street, harsh and abrupt over the constant whirring of the cicadas.

"Can I help you, young man?" Sam turned towards the sound of the voice and noticed, now that his eyes had readjusted from the early afternoon glare, the woman seated across the room next to a towering bookcase. She was somewhere past middle-aged with more gray then not in the hair that was swept up and away from her face and deep laugh lines around her eyes. She closed the book that was open on her lap and set it beside a tall glass of iced tea that was sweating on the table next to her. She regarded him with a level look. "And if you're looking for any of those comic books you've certainly come to the wrong place."

Sam grinned wide for a second and snorted a quick laugh. "No ma'am, I'm definitely not looking for comic books." He crossed the room to where she was holding court, face and tone already set and holding for how he was going to play this scene. He never felt any shame or guilt for letting people believe what they wanted to believe and this time was no different. Something was stealing children from their beds and leaving them buried in the soft river mud and he was prepared to say whatever it took to uncover the secrets that this town, like all the others he'd ever lived in, held close to its chest. He could feel it itching under his skin, that need to put this problem to rights but he pushed it down, pushed it away because he wouldn't learn anything at all with that intensity dancing through his nerves.

"Actually, I'm a grad student up in Huntsville." He smiled at her as he came up and was very careful to hunch down into himself, to not loom tall and menacing over the slight figure enthroned in the wingback chair. "I'm gathering information for my dissertation on the folklore and legends of this part of the country."

She smiled up at him, open and bright. "Well isn't that something, then." Her accent gracefully cradled the words. She gestured to her left towards an identical chair situated between two curtained windows. As he sat he could see out into a riotous and overgrown backyard. "And aren't you just a bright one, thinking to come talk to me."

She was angled towards him now, her elbows resting on her knees and a delighted grin on her face. Sam automatically matched her posture and as he did he could see her whole life laid out before him, how she'd always felt unappreciated by the people around her who never understood how important her work was, especially those small-minded yokels on the city council who were always threatening to rezone her out of existence or some such foolishness. "Well ma'am," he replied in a conspiratorial tone, "I've discovered that the only people worth talking to are those like you. You know volumes more then even my professors up at UofA."

She giggled at that. "Listen to the mouth on you." Her eyes danced as she ate up every word. "So what is it that you've come all this way to find out?"

"Well, right now I'm at the beginning of the whole process." He leaned back and relaxed into the story. "It's the fun part, really. I'm gathering stories, oral histories, about towns and families and compiling them all together. I'm hoping to be able to compare and contrast various shared folk stories of the region and determine how that might reflect the history of that place."

She raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed and intrigued. Her mouth pursed together in thought. "Let me think about that for a moment."

"Any rumor or gossip you might have heard around town would be great. The more recent the better, for statistical purposes." Sam could feel it, that flush of success that invariably accompanied a well-spun tale.

"Let's see ..." Her eyes dimmed as she stared blankly at the window, her mind clearly shuffling through memories old and new. With a start she snapped back into focus. "Why, just the other day Mabel was telling me a tale about the new preacher in town down at the Pentecostal church across from the old train yard. Apparently right there before God and the congregation he healed old Rob's leg, the one that'd been mangled in some accident near 20 years ago. They say," she leaned closer, a secretive glint in her eye, "That Reverend Hartley healed a sheriff of cancer back Tuscaloosa way and that he even brought a man back from the dead when he was only a boy."

"Is that so." Sam replied, ever so careful to keep his face clear of the chill he felt race down his spine. "That's very promising. I'll certainly have to look into that. But tell me, what have you heard about the river?"

Her head tilted to the side and she reached over to take a sip of her tea, the half-melted ice cubes clinking melodically against the glass. Her eyes widened over the rim and she set it down abruptly. "Goodness me, where are my manners. You must be parched on a day like this. Let me get you something to drink." And she was gone from the room before Sam even had a chance to refuse.

He turned his head and stared out into the yard but what he saw there instead was a cold, gray Iowa field. The buzz of the cicadas had flattened out into the atonal whine of a coding heart monitor and instead of gardenias and old books all he could smell were antiseptic cleaners and ash and soot.

Later, when he walked out into the still sweltering heat of an early Alabama evening the chill of that Iowa field still followed him. The car holding his still too quiet brother sat at the curb waiting for him, windows down and a dense bass beat pounding from the speakers.

Dean grinned at him through the window as he walked up. "So, do we have something to kill tonight?" He asked grim and excited.

"Yeah, I think we do." Sam replied, grateful, suddenly for the distraction of a nice, straight forward hunt.

A few nights later found him sequestered in a dark corner of a smoky roadhouse. He couldn't hear the click of the pool balls but he could see Dean flash a grin at his opponent, already working his magic and playing to the room. They were both satisfied from a hunt gone right for a change and the fact that there were still innocent lives and families who wouldn't be touched by the evil their world was steeped in.

"'Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord.'" Sam's head whipped to the right, startled that anyone had been able to sneak up on him. A man stood there, slender and a few years older but Sam had no way of gauging how much. His eyes were hidden by lingering shadows but the dingy lights from the bar glinted off of the gold cross tucked haphazardly under his shirt.

"You checking up on me?" the man gestured with his half-filled glass at the article glowing on the laptop's screen.

"Not everyone who claims God's power performs God's works, Reverend Hartley." Sam challenged. He closed the laptop with a snap, never once looking away from the preacher's face.

Hartley sat down, his eyes flicking quickly to the show at the pool table and back again. There was something in them that made Sam sit up straight, his senses pinging.

"I was younger then you were when you first held a gun when I healed a child no older then myself sick to death with a fever. I laid my hands on her and felt the Lord work through me. When I removed my hands I knew she was healed." His eyes were electric and Sam could feel the pull of his charisma, the power to persuade that came from absolute belief.

"Once in my arrogance I raised a man from the dead, brought back him as had been rightfully taken. My daddy and me, we thought it had been the Lord's own work but in His time we were justly rewarded for our arrogance." He took a long drink, his face clouded by memory.

Sam could feel the questions storming in his mind. "How do you know your power comes from God and not from something else?"

The other man regarded him solemnly and Sam could hear his own unspoken questions and fears. He could see the blank despair on Max Miller's face before he turned the gun on himself and the lost loneliness on Andy Gallagher's as the Impala pulled away.

"'For to one is given by the Spirit the gifts of healing and to another prophecy.' How do you know what you're doing is right, Samuel?" He shook his head, cutting off Sam's impetuous response. "Where the power comes from isn't so important as what we do with it. We have to be ready to accept what will come to us because of the choices we make." He looked down into his nearly empty glass and then back up at Sam, an almost sorrowful expression on his face. "I could heal your doubt and your pain but do you think that you'd be ready for what's coming without it?"

"I don't know what to do." Sam surprised himself with the honesty of his plea, the raw yearning in his voice.

"None of us do, son." Hartley chuckled and tipped the glass back for one last drink. "We only get to muddle along and hope the Good Lord'll see us through." He rose, his glass left empty on the table. His eyes flicked again to the show being performed at the pool table and then back over to Sam. "Keep an eye on your brother, he's liable to do himself real damage if he keeps on the way he's been going."

The night air was slick and murky, the chirping of crickets louder then the rumble of trucks passing on the highway. Sam leaned against the cement wall still warm from the day's sun, knuckles white around the strap of his bag. He'd barreled his way out of there, the sudden need for open and space and clear air overwhelming, chased by the memory of driving down a dark road with the music almost loud enough to drown out the silence of an unanswered question.

The bar door to his left swung open and shut, yellow light and noise escaping around the emerging figure.

"Hey, Sam, you okay?" In the dark Sam couldn't see the tight concern on his brother's face but he knew it was there.

"Yeah, just had enough for tonight, I guess." The silence was full of questions that Sam didn't want to face. "Why don't you go get something and bring it back to the motel?"

"Sure, whatever dude." Sam could hear the confusion and didn't miss the quizzical look that was shot his way but Dean still turned and headed towards the liquor store lit up across the road. Sam was suddenly deeply grateful for how his brother sometimes knew how to give him just what he needed.

When the vision hit Sam was grateful that he'd made it back to the room, that maybe he'd be able to shield Dean from the terror of watching it happen. All gratitude was burned to ash as the pain spiked through his skull and he saw his brother shoot a helpless man tied to a chair, his face flat and terrifying. He wanted to scream but all he could do was watch, his gift again proving to be its own just reward.


End file.
